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Andrea Yates
|occupation=House wife |path=Mass murderer |mo=Drowning |motive=Postpartum psychosis |location=Houston, Texas |era=June 20, 2001 |victims=Her 5 children |conviction=Acquitted by reason of insanity |status= Institutionalized |appearance=Mothers Who Kill }} Andrea Yates (born Andrea Pia Kennedy; July 2, 1964) is a former Houston, Texas resident who confessed to drowning her five children in their bathtub on June 20, 2001. She had been suffering for some time with very severe postpartum depression and postpartum psychosis. Yates was represented by Houston criminal defense attorney George Parnham. The then-Harris County Texas District Attorney asked for the death penalty in Yates' 2002 trial. Yates was convicted of capital murder. After the guilty verdict, but before sentencing, the State abandoned its request for the death penalty in light of false testimony by one of its expert psychiatric witnesses. Yates was sentenced to life in prison with the possibility of parole after 40 years. The verdict was overturned on appeal after it was determined a psychiatrist had committed perjury. On July 26, 2006, the Texas jury in her retrial found that Yates was not guilty by reason of insanity. She was consequently committed by the court to the North Texas State Hospital, Vernon Campus, a high-security mental health facility in Vernon, Texas, where she received medical treatment. In January 2007, Yates was moved to a low security state mental hospital in Kerrville, Texas. Biography Life Andrea Yates was born in Hallsville, Texas. She is the youngest of five children to Jutta Karin Koehler, a German immigrant, and Andrew Emmett Kennedy, whose parents were born in Ireland. Andrea was bulimic during her teenage years. She also suffered from depression and, at the age of seventeen, spoke to a friend about suicide. Yates completed a two-year pre-nursing program at the University of Houston and graduated from the University of Texas School of Nursing. From 1986 until 1994, she worked as a registered nurse at the University of Texas M.D. Anderson Cancer Center. In the summer of 1989, she met Russell "Rusty" Yates at the Sunscape Apartments in Houston, Texas, two months her junior. They soon moved in together and were married on April 17, 1993, and they announced that they "would seek to have as many babies as nature allowed". Afterwards, they bought a four-bedroom house in the town of Friendswood. In February 1994, the couple's first child, a son named Noah, was born. Shortly thereafter, Rusty accepted a job offer in Florida, so the family relocated to a small trailer in Seminole. By the birth of their third son, Paul, they settled back to Houston and purchased a GMC motor home. Following the birth of their fourth son, Luke, Andrea became depressed. The media alleged that her condition was influenced by the extremist sermons of Michael Peter Woroniecki, the preacher who sold them their bus. Her family was concerned by the way that she was so captivated by the minister’s words. On June 16, 1999, Rusty found Andrea shaking and chewing her fingers. The next day, she attempted to commit suicide by overdosing on pills. She was admitted to the hospital, and prescribed antidepressants. Soon after her release, she begged her husband to let her die as she held a knife up to her neck. Once again hospitalized, she was given a mixture of medications including Haldol, an anti-psychotic drug. Her condition improved immediately, and she was prescribed it on her release. After that, Rusty moved the family into a small house for the sake of her health. Andrea appeared temporarily to stabilize. In July 1999, she succumbed to a nervous breakdown, which culminated in two suicide attempts and two psychiatric hospitalizations that summer. She was diagnosed with postpartum psychosis. Her first psychiatrist, Dr. Eileen Starbranch, testified that she urged the couple not to have more children, as it would "guarantee future psychotic depression". They conceived their fifth and final child approximately 7 weeks after her discharge. She stopped taking the Haldol in March 2000 and gave birth to daughter Mary on November 30 of that year. She seemed to be coping well until the death of her father on March 12, 2001. She then stopped taking medication, mutilated herself, and read the Bible feverishly. She also stopped feeding her youngest child, Mary. Yates became so incapacitated that she required immediate hospitalization. On April 1, 2001, she came under the care of Dr. Mohammed Saeed. She was treated and released. On May 3, 2001, she degenerated back into a "near catatonic" state and drew a bath in the middle of the day; she would later confess to police that she had planned to drown the children that day, but had decided against doing it then. She was hospitalized the next day after a scheduled doctor visit; her psychiatrist determined she was probably suicidal and had filled the tub to drown herself. Yates continued under Dr. Saeed's care until June 20, 2001, when Rusty left for work, leaving her alone to watch the children against Dr. Saeed's instructions to supervise her around the clock. Rusty's mother, Dora Yates, had been scheduled by him to arrive an hour later to take over for her. In the space of that hour, she allegedly drowned all five children.She started with the youngest boys, and after drowning them in her bathtub, laid them in her bed. She then drowned Mary, whom she left floating in the tub. Her oldest son, Noah, came in and asked what was wrong with Mary. He then ran, but she soon caught and drowned him. She then left him floating in the tub and laid Mary in her brother's arms. Afterwards, she called the police. Then she called Rusty, saying only "It's time" repeatedly. Trials Yates confessed to drowning her children. Prior to her second trial, she told Dr. Michael Welner that she waited for Rusty to leave for work that morning before filling the bathtub because she knew he would have prevented her from harming the children. After the killings, police found the family dog locked up; Rusty advised Welner that it had normally been allowed to run free, and was so when he had left the house that morning, leading the psychiatrist to allege that she locked it in a cage to prevent it from interfering with her killing the children one by one. Rusty Yates got a family friend, George Parnham, to act as his wife's attorney. Although the defense's expert testimony agreed that Yates was psychotic, Texas law requires that, in order to successfully assert the insanity defense, the defendant must prove that he or she could not discern right from wrong at the time of the crime. In March 2002, a jury rejected the insanity defense and found her guilty. Although the prosecution had sought the death penalty, the jury refused that option. The trial court sentenced her to life imprisonment in the Texas Department of Criminal Justice with eligibility for parole in 40 years. On January 6, 2005, a Texas Court of Appeals reversed the convictions, because California psychiatrist and prosecution witness Dr. Park Dietz admitted he had given materially false testimony during the trial. Dietz stated that shortly before the killings, an episode of Law & Order had aired featuring a woman who drowned her children and was acquitted of murder by reason of insanity. Author, and later Yale University lecturer, Suzanne O'Malley, was covering the trial for O: The Oprah Magazine, The New York Times Magazine and NBC News. She had previously been a writer for Law & Order and immediately reported that no such episode existed; the appellate court held unanimously that the jury might have been influenced by Dietz's false testimony and that therefore a new trial would be necessary. On January 9, 2006, Yates again entered pleas of not guilty by reason of insanity. On February 1, 2006, she was granted release on bail on the condition that she be admitted to a mental health treatment facility. On July 26, 2006, after three days of deliberations, Yates was found not guilty by reason of insanity, as defined by the state of Texas. She was thereafter committed to the North Texas State Hospital – Vernon Campus. In January 2007, Yates was moved to a low security state mental hospital in Kerrville, Texas. Although psychiatrists for both the Texas State prosecutors and Yates' defense lawyers agreed that she was severely mentally ill with one of several psychotic diseases at the time she killed her children, the state of Texas asserted that she was by legal definition aware enough to judge her actions as right or wrong despite her mental defect. The prosecution further implied spousal-revenge as motive for the killings, despite the conclusion of defense experts that there was no evidence to support such a motive. Although the original jury believed she was legally aware of her actions, they disagreed that her motive was spousal-revenge. The jury in 2006 completely disagreed with the prosecution's assertions and her earlier conviction from 2002 was overturned. The real reason the murders happened was Yates heard voices that told her that she was a bad mother and her children would go to hell. In her state of psychosis, she believed that the only way to save her children's souls was to kill them and send them to heaven. She also wanted the state of Texas to execute her because she believed herself to be possessed by Satan. Category:Mass Murderers Category:Psychotic Killers Category:Institutionalized Killers Category:Killer Mothers Category:Family Annihilators